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Thursday, April 26, 2012

I am very excited today to begin to share with you my son's tenth birthday party projects. He has just completed all the Harry Potter books and decided he wanted a Hagwarts party. So... we started with the invites. I got this balloon owl post idea from Pinterest ... the original blog post is HERE.

Each invite was sealed with a "H" stamp and red wax. The Hogwarts logo printed on the back and addressed to them on the front "in the cupboard under the stairs" The owl post stamp image came from this blog post HERE.

Each envelope contains one ticket to the Hogwarts Express (customized to our home town and party location, in Photoshop) and an acceptance letter from Hogwarts signed by Professor M. McGonagall (I later found her actual signature image on this page HERE). This letter has a secret message hidden in it in Parseltongue (that is the font style... find free Harry Potter fonts HERE) the message reads "Happy tenth birthday Tristan, please join us". When the card is folded to fit into the envelope the Hogwarts logo is on the front.

It reads:

Dear Mr. Lauer,We are pleased to inform you that youhave been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Due to the late notice of your attendance this year we willprovide the necessaryitems you usually would be required to obtain priorto your arrival. Please prepare your wardrobe witha white shirt and either gray or black pants or skirtif you have them on hand.

Term begins May5th. The sorting ceremony will begin at 1:00 sharp. Classes and Quidditch will finishat 4:30. We await your owl (rsvp) byno later than April 3o. Your ticket for the Hogwarts Express is included in this envelope. The HogwartsTrain will depart from (insert address here) Enjoy your journey.

Yours sincerely,

Deputy Headmistress

Find the secret message in this letter to decode the reason You are being summoned…

Here is a photo with it all together.

The next step was to order up some balloons from the local party store, Party Land!I found that with the 40 invites we were handing out it was only $3 more expensive to have someone else professionally blow up these balloons instead of getting my own mini tank and taking up my time to to this task. So we ordered them in three colors with orange ribbons (to resemble their feet). Once we got them home I took sharpies and drew the owl faces and bodies on them. My hubby helped by coloring in the eyes and adding color to the beaks.

We decided to have two deliveries. Half the kids receiving invites were close friends to Tristan and we knew where they lived. So we tied the long strings (so the owls can easily be seen from the peep hole or when they open the door) from the owl balloons to the envelops... it was just enough to weight them down but we had to be careful because it was a bit breezy that day and the envelopes were not heavy enough to hold them down very well.

Here is my son "ding dong ditching" the owls to the front doors... They were so much fun to deliver this way. Sitting in the car with the windows down I was able to see and hear a lot of the reactions to our Owl Post deliveries.

The next day the rest of the balloons were ready to be delivered to his class. I tied these ones much shorter to avoid as much tangling as possible of the strings. The balloons held up beautifully (probably because I had them professionally done). This is a photo of the shorter strings and the three colors we created them in.

We tried to make the owls different too... we had some Crazy Eyed "Weasley" type owls... this one was my son's favorite.

Her is the class photo of all the kids. Remember 1/2 of them got their invitations delivered at home the night before.

My Son is the crazy looking one so excited in the bottom right corner... with his arms spread out wide. Everyone enjoyed the invitations. I hope you do too!

Oh I hope you can answer me! My daughter's birthday is coming soon and I googled your blog...how can I download the fonts you show? I go to that site and can't seem to download. Do you have a tip for that? I love, love your ideas and am snitching a few!

Dear Anonymous,I am sorry I don't have any suggestions. When I went to the link I checked it and it worked for me. Find the font you want and then the download button is on under it on the left. I am working with a PC not a Mac... maybe that is the difference. Google FREE Harry Potter Font and I hope you can find some soon! <3

My daughter just got invites to a Harry potter party and we are going to ding dong ditch our RSVP. Wish I saw this balloon post earlier. We purchased a small stuffed owl and will attach a letter with our RSVP. I think it's so much fun!! Now toget my daughter to write out the RSVP. Lol

Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know how you feel about this post. I hope you enjoyed your time here and will come back and view more. Don't forget to fallow my blog to keep updated with new projects and ideas.~ Grace ~